Jose Mourinho delivers damning verdict on Manchester United’s US tour

Jose Mourinho has delivered a damning assessment of Manchester United’s US tour, admitting that fans shouldn’t waste their money paying to watch the games.

In an extraordinary statement, he claimed that United’s missing stars have rendered the tour pointless and that the strain is ‘killing’ the other players.

After a scratch United side were beaten 4-1 by Liverpool in front of 101,000 fans in Michigan, Mourinho said: ‘The atmosphere was good but if I was them I wouldn’t have come. I wouldn’t have spent my money to watch these two teams. I watched Chelsea versus Inter earlier and people had decided the beach was better. The stadium was empty.

‘This is not our team, not our squad. The majority of players that have played are not going to play. Some of them are not even going to belong to the squad. The accumulation of matches is killing progressively my brave boys because I have some brave boys.

‘Reinforcements, you are saying players I’d like to buy and add to the squad. That is another thing, but this is not even 30 per cent of my squad, so don’t look at this that way.

‘We have four or five players that are dead because they care for the club, for the team, they try to give everything, even risking themselves because they don’t want to let all the kids play by themselves against AC Milan, Liverpool and Real Madrid. They don’t want to do that.

Over 100,000 fans packed into ‘The Big House’ in Michigan to watch the game on Saturday

Mourinho said the fans shouldn’t waste their money paying to watch United’s games

Daniel Sturridge and Liverpool were by far the better side in the second half of their win

‘Eric Bailly was not going to play and when we saw (Chris) Smalling was leaving in the warm-up he decides by himself, “ I don’t want another kid on the pitch – it’s not fair on the other guys that are there.

‘So we are trying to play these matches as best we can and we did until the gasoline lasted. Liverpool are not having the majority of their players but they rotate players. (Mo) Salah played 45 minutes. We cannot do it, so gasoline over. What this game gave me? Nothing at all.’

Mourinho admits United could be in ‘trouble’ at the start of the season unless some of his senior players come back early from holidays, and revealed that Valencia – who has flown home with a calf injury – was out of shape when he returned for pre-season.

Mourinho believes his side could be in trouble at the start of the Premier League season

‘Antonio Valencia comes from holiday,’ he said. ‘I think too much holiday for him. His condition was not good when he was back.

‘I just hope the boys on deserved holidays, they take care of themselves a little bit and somebody wants to do what Rashford and (Phil) Jones do, which is to be back a little bit earlier to try and help the team, because for the beginning of the season we are going to be in trouble.’

The United boss also had pop at the American match officials conceded two penalties against Liverpool. ‘The referee was called in by mistake,’ he added. ‘They must have been called in by the baseball federation because they didn’t have soccer in their heads. It was fun.’